Family Business

Like father...                                                           like son?

Back with Day Two and I must say it feels good to be writing again.  I've always been a bit of an exhibitionist as it pertains to my thoughts, so it is quite remarkable that I don't utilize facebook and twitter more frequently.  See I don't even know why I felt the need to share that musing.  I don't really know why we as people feel the need to share anything--everything in some cases.  Validation of our own existence, I suppose.  But as philosophy has taught me, we can't even verify that.  What does all this have to do with anything?  I don't know, but it's fun to ponder.


Now for something somewhat more purposeful.  As stated yesterday, feel free to weigh in on a particular question you might like answered by clicking here, or if you feel particularly ambitious please offer your own answer to a question.  We would be more than happy to post it if you, dear reader, are willing to share.  Part of the fun of this for us is the interaction, so the more we can encourage, the better.  Now, on to today's question.


39. Do you see yourself with children at some point in the future?


Yes.
































Just kidding, there's more to it than that.  Whoever wrote these questions is nosy.  I have been picturing my future children for way longer than what I would assume a typical man would.  Much to my own detriment in earlier days.  It isn't easy convincing a girl to start dating you when you have already pictured the whole relationship leading up to and through the wedding.  One might say I over-think things.  But let's be serious, who wouldn't want to help bring more people like me in to this world?  I mean check out that smile (above).  However, I can understand why I may have scared off a few ladies in my time with my deep commitment to commitment.


Being the planner that I am, the question I always ask myself when I think about having kids is whether or not I should adopt.  While there is something to be said for raising a child that is my own flesh and blood, I think it would be more selfless to adopt.  Our world is already ridiculously overpopulated and full of children who need good homes.  Even in our current living situation, Kieley and I could provide a strong support for those in need.  Don't worry, we're not planning anything just yet.


Still, I'm a selfish person and I want a child that I helped to create.  I worry for that child, though.  More than I worry for my family, friends, Kieley, and myself.  I worry for my friends kids, too.  I think every generation faces the same concern: what kind of world are we leaving behind for our children?  I honestly don't know.  What I do know is that whether my child is my blood or someone else's, I want the opportunity to raise at least one.  It would make me feel good to know that the next generation has someone a little bit like me living in it.  I hope he or she has a fair chance to improve the world in whatever small way he or she can.


And if he can grow a sweet beard before he is 10, well that would be something I'd like to see.

Where Do I Begin?

Glad to be back here in blogland after a long hiatus filled with working, moving, finding a new job, watching all of our movies, and waiting for the winter that never came. But alas, we're loving life in Chicago! In theme with this week's challenge:

23. What does your Mom do?

Well, what a question I randomly selected! My initial thought went to her job as a middle school teacher for the adolescent heathens of south Florida, a job she handles with such smart aplomb that putting my respect and admiration into words is nearly impossible. But in all honesty, that is her job and what my Mom actually does, what she is, remains a different thing entirely.

In no particular order...

My mom does this fantastic thing where she cracks herself up. I mean a side-splitting, roll over, fall on the floor laughter fit. Most of the time it takes everyone else a few minutes to catch up and the joke is (usually) worth it. Regardless, we all end up on the floor laughing.

My mom loves to recycle. She is a big crusader for planet Earth when it comes to plastics, glassware, and newspapers. She was so outraged by the lack of recycling at her school that she saved up about 250 water bottles and brought them home. And yes, she started crunching them one by one outside my bedroom window when I came home to visit, starting promptly at 8am on a Saturday, and sure it took hours and many a triumphant gleeful stomp after which she tossed them into the recycle bin, but the job got done. Deb doesn't do anything half-assed.

My mom makes the best meatloaf and macaroni salad, hands down. I can't duplicate it. No matter what I do. The same goes for chocolate chip cookies and a wide variety of homemade snack foods that have never seen a recipe page. Maybe she leaves out a secret ingredient, but let's be honest: it's probably love.

My mom gestures violently at idiot drivers. There's an escalating pattern to her rage, starting with a frustrated hand tap on the wheel. Then comes a raised hand and tongue tisk. Next we meet the infamous "double hand dance" where both wrists swivel about accompanied by a few choice words. I've never seen her get out of the car, but if both hands fly up, I know someone did something deservedly BAD.

My mom is gorgeous, naturally, and how she does it I don't know- more than saying her genes rock. Like most moms she hates picture taking and likes fussing in the kitchen and enjoys all that motherly behind the scenes work, but she should always be in pictures.

My mom can raise those Jersey roots in ten seconds flat. The balls of steel? The confident swagger? The sharp charm of a true champion? I've seen her raise a fight in a crowded Walmart over bad customer service and emerge victorious. Now THAT's something to claim with pride.

My mom roots for the Giants...and not just before they won this year's Superbowl (sorry, babe). She has always been their self-proclaimed biggest fan. Prior to game time , the lucky Giants socks come on, the shirt is worn, and she huddles in the living room "football chair." Then there's the inevitable chanting, cursing, hooting, hollering, and, in the event of a win, I do love the victory dance in front of the television which is an odd mix between the funky chicken and the electric slide. Most people learn to love football from their dad or a favorite uncle, but I learned to love it from my mom. And also to hate the Cowboys.

My mom buys in bulk. I think this comes from raising us in Florida where people have a "hurricane closet." My sister and I grew up dreading the day we might ever have to drink that condensed milk, but we were never left ill prepared when danger threatened. Batteries, canned vegetables, boxes of travel-sized cereal, juice packs, q-tips, shower goods, candles...my sister and I were the go-to girls for friends who liked playing store. If only I had better understood at that young age why I wasn't allowed to use Mom's checks to "pay" for sundries we all might have been spared a lot of frustration. I want her on my team during the apocalypse.

My mom has a soft spot which is really more of an all-encompassing black hole for shelter dogs. She spends her summers working tirelessly at Big Dog Ranch Rescue and does everything she can to get those dogs adopted by posting on Facebook and spreading the word to friends and strangers alike. Her passion would make anyone a believer, and if more people did the same we could put an end to kill shelters altogether. Check out the incredible BDRR here: http://www.bdrr.org

My mom has never shied away from awesomeness. She agreed to be one of the first cookie moms in my Brownie troupe, having no idea of what would become of our living room when the boxes arrived. She spent hours laboring over Halloween costumes when Kate and I were growing up; I didn't even know you could buy one from a store because the beautiful Disney princesses, the 60's Barbie, the Native American, the little elf I morphed into once a year all appeared from her own hands. She wrote notes with beautifully colored pictures on them for our lunches every day in elementary school and when I was too scared to go through the lunch line by myself on pizza day, she came to school and we had a date. She confronted my hellish seventh grade English teacher (who made Omarosa look like a saint) because I had a D in the subject when I always had an A (turns out this nightmare was purposefully failing kids). Mom never missed a play, conference, spelling bee, or ceremony (she'd be the one seated at the front clapping wildly) and the attention she paid to holidays would peak Martha Stewart's interest. And most of all she has always supported her children, no matter what, even if supporting them meant tough love for a better long term goal.

My Mom is a Mom, that is what she does; every minute of every day, loving unconditionally, and it will always be what I am proudest of her for.

New Digs

Welcome back!  Here's the short version of where we have been: job search, Thanksgiving, job search, Christmas, move, job search, job search, job search.  Okay, now that that is out of the way, here is the current two week challenge.


Each day we will answer a different question from this Website which seemingly has no purpose except to give us an easy new challenge to meet to get back in the swing of things.  Feel free to check out the questions here or by typing "good conversation starters" into Google.  We would gladly accept requests for questions to answer, so feel free to weigh in.


Thanks again for past and (hopefully) future interest in our musings.  And an extra special thanks goes out to those who held out hope that we would return and checked back with us in January and February.


And now, the first question...


46. How long have you been living at where you live now?

Randomly selected, and how apropos.  Well, my lady and I have been living in an "undisclosed" new location for just a little over two months now.  Certainly, most everyone that reads this will know where we are, if not to the exact latitude and longitude at least to the region.  However, the reason we can not say exactly where we are has to do with...well, let's just leave it at that until April 15, 2012.

It's been a wonderful experience thus far and I've never seen Kieley or Maddie (our dog) in better spirits.  Even without a full-time job yet, I'm encouraged by the decision to move.  I actually realized yesterday just how fun it is to see Kieley around true winter weather--or at least as true of a winter that has been offered to us this year in *censored, --*.

It's fun to watch her discover things about the area that I have known about my entire life.  For me it has been a rediscovery of not only the season, but also the place in this world that I have always thought of as home.  I'm not great about looking at the world through other people's eyes, but the glimpses that I have seen through Kieley's have been fascinating.  I can't remember the last time I thought about the way snow falls and moves differently across a frozen wood plank, or how bizarre it actually is to have my snot freeze in my nose.

Anyway, just a little over two months is how long we have been living here.

Riot On

Halloween Riot; Madison, Wisconsin; 2003

Read this first.

As my friend Machen said, this is all very sad and ridiculous.  I don't want to get in to how I feel about the whole Joe Paterno situation, suffice it to say I think anyone who thinks he has done enough just by telling on someone deserves whatever happens to them when the other shoe drops.  Ire-inducing as that whole mess is, at least it makes some kind of sense.

What doesn't make sense to me is a student body's desire to riot.  Are students jealous that their parents and grandparents got to take part in protests that were actually purposeful back in the '60s?  Imagine if at the end of the Penn State riots if the Board of Trustees came out and said to the mob "you guys have really gotten our attention.  You have made a valid point and expressed yourselves in a productive, mature way.  We are going to rehire Joe Paterno as the head coach of the football team."

After all that is what rioting is about, right?  Using violence to get what we want or to imply or dissatisfaction with the way things are.  Riots provoke change, in theory.  Perhaps a better lens through which to view rioting is that it is senseless aggression and hatefulness for its own sake.  College was/is a hard time in life.  Teenagers and early twenty-somethings are emotional lot prone to flights of whimsy and hysteria.  Ideas are put in to action before they are processed as good, bad, or neutral.  It's easy to see where the firing of lovable grandfather type would ignite negative feelings in the minds of the Penn State student body.  As those students learn how to integrate in to the world, an action like that could easily be construed as a reason to believe the world does not care about their opinions.  It could even be seen as a reason to distrust the world they are expected to become a part of.

Perhaps some of that is too grandiose, but if I don't allow myself to look at it that way it just makes my heart hurt.  Because the alternative is that people are by nature maniacal, cruel, and irrational; and that just makes me sad for those rioting and those of us who have to witness the rioting.  I'd rather believe that the Penn State student body was just being a bunch of kids who didn't know any better.  Not that that makes me feel a lot better.

It all takes me back to my college days and the yearly Halloween riots that would take place in Madison.  Off the top of my head, I believe the first riot started because some girls on a balcony wouldn't show their breasts after they implied that they would.  Rioting because you didn't get to see naked boobs, or rioting because you feel your coach who knew of sexual abuse going on in his program was wrongly fired, which reason is better?

That first Halloween riot would be pathetic in its own right, but the fact that it sparked a yearly "tradition" is depressing.  They got worse every year I was in college until the city finally developed a proper gameplan that was rather fascist in its execution.  But I would rather feel safe celebrating a goofy holiday than feel like I need to tell every out of towner I see to not trash Jamba Juice this year.  My understanding is that things have died down in Madison over the years and are back to "normal"--whatever that means now.  

To me it is tragic things got away from the carefree way they used to be in the first place.  Life is hard enough without riots.

Cute But Kind of Evil

I remember the thrill of my first horror movie at the age of seven. My babysitter let me stay up late to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV. For a sheltered kid, I had captured the trifecta of awesomeness: no parental guidance, movie I shouldn't be watching, and reveling in the glory of life after 8pm. But as I sat huddled on the couch witnessing hapless teenagers get the life drained out of them, I encountered my first true feeling of terror. This was worse than when Mom took my Barbies away in kindergarten or having to eat tuna casserole for dinner. I'd thus far grown up watching Sesame Street, Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Full House. Power Rangers was considered a little too violent and Rugrats sounded like a show with bad kids. The second I saw that vampire laying across clueless Kristy Swanson's pillows, I left my innocence behind.

It's the same feeling you experience when finding out Santa isn't giving Mickey special dog biscuits to keep him from barking against a velvet-clad intruder bearing toys and craving cookies. You lose that sense of assurance you'd possessed as a wide-eyed kid. Everything isn't always as it seems. At some point, I might have had to stake a vamp.

Terrible a movie as it was (Donald Sutherland WHHHHY?) I refused horror flicks until high school when "The Ring" rolled around and everyone thought it would be a fun Friday night to watch Samara crab-walk her way to death-dealing destruction...from a well...flickering across the television screen of her poor victims. I remembered again why I'd abstained from this genre for so long. My brain just wouldn't let it go. I couldn't stop thinking about how creepy it was and what if it really happened and if that TV went snowy on me I would lose my *&%$. Give me a good thriller or a mystery, now that's legit fun. But coupled with a recent viewing of "The Shining," "The Ring" only compacted an intense desire to leave frightening films in the hands of my better-equipped friends. This would also explain the equally frightening collections of rom coms which until very recently counted "The Wedding Planner" among its numbers.

So I missed watching "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 13th" until my twenties. "Saw" will never be on my Christmas list. I can't picture turning to John and saying, "You know, honey, I could really go for a double feature of "The Grudge" and "The Omen"...want to grab some popcorn?" No matter how many times my sister tells me to watch "The Amityville Horror" it won't happen. I am just not built to withstand those kinds of movies.

What spurred this walk down memory lane was part of the game John and I are playing: to watch all of our combined DVD's before being allowed to purchase more. And since I'd never had the pleasure of meeting Freddy Kreuger, watching all of John's Elm Street gems was part of the deal. I was curious, not psyched. I knew very well that Freddy was the terror of my elementary school friends' slumber parties. But I also approached it knowing the bulk of this series were made before the true dawn of CGI. So we began a proper horror education.

Here is what I learned:

1. The first one was scary but dated. I jumped, I yelped, I was delightfully engrossed. Also? Call Stacy and Clinton because Freddy is screaming for a new wardrobe. He clearly needs better friends...which he would have if he didn't kill them while they slept. Rude.

2. The second was unnecessarily "adult-teen" homoerotic and boring. That whole scene in the shower? Where's Benson and Stabler when you need them? I believe it does win the award for most violent bird death since "The Birds" though, and that's something.

3. The third was better, so much better, and saw the return of Nancy. She took some acting lessons, got seriously educated, but unfortunately got bigger hair. I enjoyed the cast of teens and the overall lack of actual Freddy screen time even though he offed our original heroine in a badly wall-papered dream room.

4. Blargh. I fell asleep. I didn't like any of the characters. Mercifully, Freddy performed his kindest deed yet by slaying Patricia Arquette's replacement in the first 30 minutes. Water beds are also a lot more dangerous than I originally thought.

5. Yes! Alice is cooler, blonde, and dating Dan the Stud. Her life is awesome. But as the first storied scene of all her buddies gathered for a grad photo splashes across the screen I groan. "Clearly the girl with a Momager is going to die first, shortly followed by the stoned hipster..." Alice lives and so does her unborn child, but Dan the Stud doesn't make Krueger's cut. Freddy is terribly scared of Mother Mary Helena who he affectionately calls "bitch" instead of "Mom." I'm guessing she didn't hand out hugs and smile rainbows during much of his childhood. Column? Win.

6. I don't like this. They moved the story from Cali to O-Hi-O and we are introduced to our purported hero in a Wizard of Oz like crashdown. His name escapes me, as does any logic of the story. I woke up in time to see Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold making a hilarious cameo before I fell back asleep. We'll be finishing this up tomorrow. Verdict? Undecided.

"The Nightmare" series is admittedly not that scary...not in the sense of other horror fare gracing our movie screens in this age of advanced computer animation and children reared on information overload. But it's a step in the right direction as far as my horror-tolerance is concerned. John and I realized one of the most interesting things a franchise could do would be to make a movie or show where the townsfolk legitimately tried to figure out why so many teenagers kept dying in weird, gruesome, and often bizarre ways (I'm looking at you Elm Street, Buffy, Supernatural, and even General Hospital). For now, though, a thank you to Freddy Kreuger. I bet that's the first time anyone has ever put that phrase your way.

Strangers with Candy

Have a safe and happy Halloween

It's difficult to avoid falling in to the habit of referring to myself as "dad" when it comes to our dog, Maddie.  I'm not sure what doing so satisfies in me, or anyone, psychologically but I do know if feels natural to do.  Of course I never really wanted any of this being a dog person but that too came naturally.

I was walking Maddie the other day when we crossed paths with an over-exuberant dog enthusiast, and stranger.  After coming at the poor dog way too familiarly for a new person in her world, the woman asked if she could give Maddie a cookie.  I hesitantly said "yes" thinking on why it would be considered rude to deny a stranger the opportunity to feed my dog while it would be totally within reason to deny that same stranger the chance to feed my child.  Why should the trust change?

Now I don't think this woman had any harmful intent, but these are the irrational things we start to believe as we grow to love someone and feel the need to protect them.  I watched intently as the woman reached in to her bag full of random papers and objects that had no discernible association with one another.  In there along with everything else were, not surprisingly, dog treats.  Who knows why she carried dog treats in her backpack.

My worried suspicion was that she lugged them around so that when she saw a dog she could seize the opportunity to feed it one of her arsenic-laced treats and rid the world of another nuisance.  As she held the treat out to Maddie my mind flashed to images from a movie I can't remember the name of (bonus points if someone reading can help me out with this) where a man is asked to show someone his papers and as he reaches to do so he conceals a sharp object under the papers.  The man then stabs the other man in the neck.

Thankfully, Maddie did not take the treat and thus spared me from picturing any more gruesome, illogical imaginings on how the whole situation would play out.  In spite of all this accusatory, distrustful thinking about this woman I still felt bad that Maddie did not take the treat--highly unusual behavior for her.  Maddie did not take the treat when I tried to give it to her.  In fact, she did not even take the treat when we were out of sight from the woman.

My little girl knows not to take candy from strangers and I could not be a prouder papa.


What I've Learned
October 9th: The Cowboys were the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 10th: The LA Rams were truly the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 11th: Steven Spielberg was to direct Cape Fear while Martin Scorsese directed Schindler's List.
October 12th: Nothing that I can remember.
October 13th: You can't donate blood when you have a cold.
October 14th: A Glasgow Grin is something Scottish criminals do that leaves their victims with scars like the Joker's from The Dark Knight.
October 15th: Britain's current Queen Elizabeth is not . 22nd:a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth I.
October 16th: The St Louis Cardinals farm system is located in Florida (explained to me by my six-year-old nephew).
Oct. 17th: The circle by our house is called Pinehurst Circle, not Chevy Chase Circle nor Connecticut Circle.
Oct. 18th: Stephen King has a new book coming out.
Oct. 19th: 72% of black children are born to unwed mothers compared to 29% of whites children.
Oct. 20th: The food with the highest ANDI score is kale.
Oct. 21th: Muamar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels.
Oct. 22nd: At the age of 25 Scott Hall killed a man when he was a bouncer in 1983.

Oct. 23rd: A 2001 survey suggested that 83% of pet owners refer to themselves as "mommy" or "daddy"

Razor's Edge

Scott Hall, or Razor Ramon as many wrestling fans know him, was always one of my favorite characters.  He was supposedly playing a Scarface knockoff.  Maybe it's my hatred for that movie, but I don't see it that way.  Apparently the persona was supposed to be Cuban, but Ramon just seemed cool.  Nationality was irrelevant as Ramon was "oozing machismo" as the announcers would say.  (I can still hear my dad mimicking that line.)

Scott Hall is still cool as a 53-year-old man who is in a very real life and death battle with alcoholism and drug addiction.  But the E:60 video expose I watched about Hall seems to implicitly suggest that Hall's addiction to wrestling is just as detrimental to his health.  I can understand that completely, I am only a fan and I can't quit the stuff myself.  Imagine what it is like to be on the other side.

Wrestling falls under a lot of scrutiny for the early deaths seen in the business and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a very good system in place to take care of these men and women after they retire.  I don't disagree entirely, but I have some serious issues with the way football players are cast off once they've retired. (More on that someday, perhaps.)  As I get older I see a big problem with wrestling--and the major difference between it and other performance-based professions--is that wrestlers are playing a character but they have to be that character in perpetuity.  There is never a down time for a wrestler and the more real they can be in the ring as a character, not an athlete (though wrestlers are ridiculously underrated or entirely unrecognized as real athletes), the better.

So wrestlers have to pretend all the time and that must be confusing.  Talking about it confuses me.  Thus, an intelligent, insightful man such as Scott Hall isn't sure if he is performing or not.  Is his character now a  man who can't quit the business or the excesses in which the business invites him to partake?  As long as people are still willing to pay to see him (and do exposes on him), I guess it probably is.  He knows he is genuinely dying from the choices he is making, but that's who he has been for a long time.  Is that a character, or is that the person he actually is?

I don't know, but I'm scared for him.  Both as a lover of wrestling and a fan of Razor Ramon as well as someone who does not want to watch Scott Hall, the human being, suffer and hurt those who love him.


What I've Learned
October 9th: The Cowboys were the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 10th: The LA Rams were truly the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 11th: Steven Spielberg was to direct Cape Fear while Martin Scorsese directed Schindler's List.
October 12th: Nothing that I can remember.
October 13th: You can't donate blood when you have a cold.
October 14th: A Glasgow Grin is something Scottish criminals do that leaves their victims with scars like the Joker's from The Dark Knight.
October 15th: Britain's current Queen Elizabeth is not . 22nd:a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth I.
October 16th: The St Louis Cardinals farm system is located in Florida (explained to me by my six-year-old nephew).
Oct. 17th: The circle by our house is called Pinehurst Circle, not Chevy Chase Circle nor Connecticut Circle.
Oct. 18th: Stephen King has a new book coming out.
Oct. 19th: 72% of black children are born to unwed mothers compared to 29% of whites children.
Oct. 20th: The food with the highest ANDI score is kale.
Oct. 21th: Muamar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels.
Oct. 22nd: At the age of 25 Scott Hall killed a man when he was a bouncer in 1983.